


The Destroyer

by Jayne L (JayneL)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-27
Updated: 2013-05-27
Packaged: 2017-12-13 02:51:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/819106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JayneL/pseuds/Jayne%20L
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Josie was her father's only child.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Destroyer

**Author's Note:**

> From clari-clyde's character prompt.

Josie was her father's only child.

She had cousins, but only one of them had any interest in joining the order. After barely five months of active membership, he was careless about his Key of Solomon, and a demon snapped his neck like a dry twig.

The legacy had to be maintained. There was strength in legacies, and the Sands family was one of the society's oldest, stretching back through the centuries like the trunk of a giant redwood, a great column of the Men of Letters' power. And it wasn't unheard of that a woman should take active duty; there was strength in women, too, that the order had supported itself upon through the ages. In the natural ways that men have always supported themselves on women, and in supernatural ways, as well.

To Josie, it all seemed faintly ridiculous. All those hidebound Men in their thick robes, hunched over their spellwork, speaking of the Responsibilities Of The Order with echoing ages of dire solemnity. In the early days, as she and Henry worked towards official initiation, they laughed quietly together about the elders; like her, Henry understood the society's importance without allowing its weight to overawe him. But their camaraderie faltered not long after Henry's son was born: it was as if, faced with the tangible reality of propagating his own legacy, Henry could no longer see the forest for his own branch of the society's tree.

Josie was unmarried and childless and pleased to remain so. For all its frequently stuffy adherence to history and tradition, she enjoyed the work of the order: accessing its vast libraries of arcana, learning and using the ingredients of its abilities, its magics, its technologies. Doing good in the world in ways few people were even aware good could be done.

"You'll have a family one day," Henry told her frequently after his son was born, as if she needed the reassurance.

She only smiled and thought: With the baby at home and evil abroad, maybe Henry was the one in need of reassurance.

That was the crux, as Josie saw it, of all of them. The Men of Letters was a congress of people with the knowledge to confront the darkness in the world, and a uniform fear of doing so alone. Strength in numbers; power in legacies. You can wage your best war when you have someone to protect; the best protection you can offer is incorporation into the fight.

Josie was her father's only child.

Abaddon won the war.


End file.
